k like that! She treated
me abominably; and before I married you I had come not to care twopence
about her."

"You did care about her when you proposed to me?"

"No!--not at all! Of course, when I went out to New York I was sore,
because she had thrown me over."

"And I"--Daphne made a scornful lip--"was the feather-bed to catch you
as you fell. It never occurred to you that it might have been honourable
to tell me?"

"Well, I don't know--I never asked you to tell me of your affairs!"

Roger, his hands in his pockets, looked round at her with an awkward
laugh.

"I told you everything!" was the quick reply--"_everything_."

Roger uncomfortably remembered that so indeed it had been; and moreover
that he had been a good deal bored at the time by Daphne's confessions.

He had not been enough in love with her--then--to find them of any great
account. And certainly it had never occurred to him to pay them back in
kind. What did it matter to her or to anyone that Chloe Morant had made
a fool of him? His recollection of the fooling, at the time he proposed
to Daphne, was still so poignant that it would have been impossible to
speak of it. And within a few months afterwards he had practically
forgotten it--and Chloe too. Of course he could not see her again, for
the first time, without being "a bit upset"; mostly, indeed, by the
boldness--the brazenness--of her behaviour. But his emotions were of no
tragic strength, and, as Lady Barnes had complained to Mrs. French, he
was now honestly in love with Daphne and his child.

So that he had nothing but impatience and annoyance for the recollection
of the visit of the afternoon; and Daphne's attitude distressed him.
Why, she was as pale as a ghost! His thoughts sent Chloe Fairmile to the
deuce.

"Look here, dear!" he said, kneeling down suddenly beside his
wife--"don't you get any nonsense into your head. I'm not the kind of
fellow who goes philandering after a woman when she's jilted him. I took
her measure, and after you accepted me I never gave her another thought.
I forgot her, dear--bag and baggage! Kiss me, Daphne!"

But Daphne still held him at bay.

"How long were you engaged to her?" she repeated.

"I've told you--three weeks!" said the man, reluctantly.

"How long had you known her?"

"A year or two. She was a distant cousin of father's. Her father was
Governor of Madras, and her mother was dead. She couldn't stand India
for long together, and she used to